Day one at Dokutech

Kushtrim Xhakli & Vladan Joler kicked off a new kind of tech event in Kosovo, named Doku:tech and held in parallel with the cultural event Dokufest. Under the hot sun and eager tech enthusiasts from around the world, talks have started todayÂ onÂ open knowledge, digital security, privacy, social entrepreneurship, and business.

Lee Bryant, passionate about using social technology to put humans front and centre of the way we do things in the Twenty-First Century, started the first presentation today around the commercial and state institutions aimed to create defensible positions within which they could exercise control of employees and citizens. “These institutions are now tired and ageing, but still clinging to their privileged positions. But the Twenty-First Century economy is driven by a war of manoeuvre not attrition. It is about influence, not control; networks not borders” continued on his presentation Bryant, while emphasizing the importance of a vibrant network.

Panelists, Arandjel Bojanovic, Altin Ukshini and Bilal Ghalib had an open discussion around creating and running Hackerspaces. “Our Albanian hackerspace was like a Mexican telenovela” stated Altin from the Prishtina Hackerspace, while Arandjel was talking about the Belgrade Hacklab, as a private apartment and where their programmers underwrite it because they have salaries.

Deanna Zandt, was up next leading her talk “I Love the Internetz, But I Hate Your Fauxwesome Life”. Her presentation was focused on the internet, where everyone is all the time– 24/7, sharing selfies, memes, check-ins, food porn, and just enough inspirational quotes to keep self-help gurus in business.

In the end the audience was greeted the famous sci-fi author Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic, who talked about how she hacked famous war songs and remaking them from a pacifist woman’s point of view with bands and genres from all over the world. “Because all the war songs are from men’s perspective, I decided to hack them” stated Jasmina, while Bruce was mentioning how there is no such as an American Economic model.

In parallel to the talks, there were four workshops organized, one on Yoga, another one on Creating Resilience in Communities Through Digital Mapping, another one on Free Cultural Works and Creative Commons and the last Workshop on Security Awareness.

The next day tomorrow will continue with a couple of other interesting talks whereas more details can be found here, and for the convenience, you can always download the iOS or Android event app.

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